“Life had taken us for a ride, and it shows. I’m proud of it” : Best Fit speaks to Celebration

The Internet cultivates ‘barrier free exchange’; what is your viewpoint on the ‘constant’ culture it also nurtures – through Twitter, Facebook, blogs, Tumblr etc etc? How has it affected you with Celebration? And personally, how do you feel about, and interact with, the Internet?

I have love/hate with these things. I quit Facebook a couple of years ago. I believe the CIA uses Facebook literally as a book of faces, an up to date, minute by minute, dossier on all users (99 million people and counting). The potential for commercial and political exploitation, scares me to the core. I am very careful.

On the other hand, I love the idea that people can share instantaneously. More often it’s with pictures/video. But everything is becoming a symbol and a meme as if some futuristic fourth dimensional hieroglyphs. So instantaneous in fact, we’ve a global case of ADD, a flash of this and flash of that and “what next”.

I feel like humanity is drunk with information. Our ancestors, to my knowledge, have never been so exposed to each other and the world. But, the caveat is that it’s not REAL, it is a “virtual reality”, not tangible but fallible and manipulatable . Sometimes I believe past the corporate sludge, it’s just a din of narcissists building ego shrines. That’s the dark side. The bright side, is seeing and connecting to the beauty and humor of life and experiencing a by proxy empathy resonance with others, well outside our physical limitations.

Personally I really don’t like album or single reviews, or live reviews. Elvis Costello once said writing about music is like dancing about architecture. I struggle with the way people dissect somebody else’s creation. And with the internet, it can happen so instantaneously, with little/no thought. Do you read reviews? How do you feel the Internet has impacted music journalism?

Yes, I read reviews of my work: it’s like watching a car crash. You helplessly cannot look away. As an insecure artist I’m always looking for confirmation. It is my weakness. If I didn’t give a damn what others thought, it would never leave my basement. People sometimes genuinely take the time with an open heart and listen. Other times I’m not sure if they made it past the first chorus. All in all we have received some pretty good reviews, but the bad ones hurt . Anyone with internet access has the power destroy or deify your hard work with a few keystrokes. Now whether that person has any weight or not can be the defining factor. Who are these people? Are they music lovers? Witty antagonists? Frustrated journalists? High school kids? Cointelpro? We’ll never know really.

What do you love about making music?

I believe that music is the most powerful expression of communion with creation. Physically I love the escapism from the mundane. Spiritually it makes I feel connected with “the other”. Singing is my life.

Do you have any other creative outputs?

I write. I take photos. I love making art, painting, paper sculpture, video, collage. I dabble in many mediums. I don’t dedicate enough time to any one thing to master it, sadly. I just have lots of ideas/feelings and a need to express.

Have you ever thought about calling it quits with Celebration? If so, why?

Yes. We’ve felt like the world was against us so many times. We have a long history playing together, we are a family. Sean and I are married. We’ve been together 20 years. Life is a balance of light and dark forces. It’s the good things that have kept us together.

Your live show is amazing. Do you enjoy playing live?

When it’s on and everyone in the band is connected, it’s energizing and emancipating. When I get my spell broken or rather my illusions shattered by an unsuccessful connection to the audience it’s distracting and forced. The key is to not be tugged on by your ego either way. Your ego shouldn’t be attached. That’s the hard part. The ultimate goal live is to become a channel or conduit for the collective spirit. Sometimes it happens.

I am really excited to hear you are working on a new record – can you tell us a bit about this?

This is the second installment of the Electric Tarot (our musical tarot deck). We’ve been recording it in pieces over the last six months. Some at home, some at High End studio. We want this to be the most intimate, experience of Celebration. It’s all over the place really. We have a children’s song. A song that’s a psychedelic take on French folk style. A seven minute dirty rock song with a FUCKING GUITAR SOLO (I never thought we would indulge/cross the line… just a pinky toe). A wartime lullaby. A 50′s doo- wop shaman song. A song that I can only say sounds like Scooby Doo in a Clockwork Orange.

New Track: ‘Tomorrow’s Here Today’

New Track: ‘Blood is the Brine’

These themes seem unrelated but I assure you we will tie them together. The key will be when we sequence the record. We are now in the final tracking, just the cherries and frosting. We have been having a blast. As to how anyone will hear it? I don’t know. We need someone to believe in it. But nobody’s heard it, we haven’t “shopped” it around. So I’m not sure how that will happen. Crazy I just don’t know how to self promote, I’m not a marketer. No one in the band is.

How do you feel about the time we live in?

Happy to be alive. Sitting here next to my cat, having a nice cup of coffee, in my beautiful house and having the privilege to communicate to a person (you) on the other side of the world, who cared enough about my creative expression to ask me some heartfelt questions. I am LUCKY! I sometimes get depressed. There is so much corruption and suffering in the world, always has been. But I believe we are experiencing the growing pains of evolution.

If you could move 1000 years into the future, would you?

Yes. If humanity is still around it will be incredible to see. If not, I’d enjoy some peace and quiet.

What are some things that influence your creativity?

The love and the fear involved with living on this planet in this day and time. Being bipolar, I feel my creativity is greatly influenced by my sensitivity to the world. It’s a way to get out of my head and into my heart. I was born into chaos. My parents were very young when they had me. They were outcasts in the deep south in the 70s. My father was a pool shark/drug dealing/ engineering student. My mother was a schizophrenic cocktail waitress/artist.
Key points from my childhood that shaped me :

- Everyone in my immediate family, besides myself has found a dead body. The stories behind each are intense and chilling.

- When I was two years old, I was in a horrible car wreck I was thrown through the windshield of a car and landed in a construction site; I had plastic surgery to reconstruct the right side of my face.

- When I was three and a half, two men broke into our house in the middle of the night and hog tied my mother and robbed us….

- My father listened to music constantly (mainly: Led Zeppelin, Neil Young, Pink Floyd, The Beatles, The Doors)

- My mother’s slow decline into madness and addiction, seeing her act like an animal.

- By the time I was 18 years old I had moved twenty-two times. I lived out of a suitcase, I missed a lot of school (ie: programing).
I’m looking at this list and thinking “damn this is dark!”. Woven throughout the chaos were weird, happy and beautiful moments; most of them from non traditional experiences. My imagination and ability to escape through art and music was my saving grace. It was my constant in a life of surprises.

What inspires you?

The patterns in nature and man. The magic and mysteries of life and death. Human spiritual ritual song and dance. Collective Consciousness, Dreams

What fascinates you?

The Cosmos.

If you could have all the secrets to the universe – how it was created, is there a boundary, when will it end, etc etc etc OR $100million in your bank account, what would you choose and why?

The secrets would be cool. It might blow my mind up. I don’t think humans have the ability to understand infinity. If we could, we wouldn’t be human.